French pharmaceutical company Sanofi announced on Monday a planned expansion of its global competence centre in India’s Gaidarabad and an increase in the number of employees there to more than 4,500.
The unit now has a workforce of about 2,600 employees.
The company said in a statement that the expansion of the unit will require an investment of hundreds of millions of euros, but did not name the specific amount they plan to spend to attract additional staff or the timeframe in which they plan to complete it.
In 2024, Sanofi said it intends to invest 400 million euros in an Indian competence centre by the end of this decade.
Multinationals are increasingly setting up similar centres in India, Reuters said. Over time, they have evolved from low-cost satellite offices to innovation hubs that support companies in operations, finance, research and development.
India is home to more than 1,700 Global Competence Centres with a combined workforce of more than 1.9 million, according to consultancy Anarock, which forecasts this market to grow at a compound annual growth rate of 10% on the horizon by 2030.
Sanofi’s stock price is up 0.4% during trading on Monday. Since the beginning of the year, the company’s capitalisation has fallen by 5.8%, to around EUR94bn.